Meaning Is Expensive

Bitter can be mechanical. But the bitter is frail. It's a frail machine. As felicity. Or neon blinking in the Kansas night. Vacancy. Vacancy. Vacancy. Things have meanings. Tables are gallant. Chairs are supportive. Embryos are guests. They develop into autonomous beings who will later start out in life doing the hand jive and then getting married with champagne dribbling from their chins. The eyes are the chaos of vision shaved by the smell of fever. The huge overflow of muslin in a frontier clothing store. The feeling of being subjective when it turns into a wild energy you can't understand. The enduring softness of a woman’s voice coming from a late-night bar near Alamogordo. I hear an element in the needle. The melody of water in the Rio Chama.  Unlike the casino. Some things don’t have meaning. What they do have is geometry. And bank loans. If something has a cost that’s not a meaning that’s a price. Meaning is expensive.

Whoever invented Hawaii was a genius. But whoever invented tourists must’ve been bored to the point of sadistic. The torpor is seismic that spends all day in a pharmacy. That happened to me once and I got wrapped up in comic books and stamping liquor bottles. Later in life I discovered joviality. This was mainly in California, long before half the population began living in tents under bridges while the other half watered acres of golf course. They say water seeks its own level but sometimes it doesn’t. Water does what it wants. And that’s how swimming was invented. Robert Mitchem and Marilyn Monroe arguing all the way down the river of no return.

Terrible how uncertain everything feels right now. I see icicles in Europe’s future. People freezing. Pubs closing. Children too cold and hungry to study. Horseshoes on doors mermaids in black ice. Oboe in the corner too cold to play. Adagio and rondo for glass harmonica crystalized in someone’s breath. Dead to the world. Wood is the new gold. Gold is gold. Still can’t eat it. Can’t burn it. Can’t cuddle up to it and expect a kiss. Can’t wear it. Well, no. That you can do.

A white octopus in black depths swims toward you, tentacles undulating in greeting. Hug the void it wants your love and understanding. The gunslinger will sleep in the barn tonight. We’ll group together in the living room and listen to Arvo Pärt. I make this in a forgiving presence. The past is on my heels. The future is full of zeal. Or is that madness glinting around the eyes? Heaven is all about mercy and peace. Hell is about military strategy. And weaponry and size.

I work in a language where I claim nothing as my own. Ownership is a strange idea. Being alive is hard enough without those kinds of complications. If you’ve ever been fired you know how that feels. Adam and Eve fleeing the garden. Though no job I ever had came close to paradise. It was mostly mops and buckets and unadulterated tedium. I hated the day I was born sings John Lee Hooker. My God what a thing to say. But the way Hooker sings it it’s not hate is that hate no it can’t be hate the song is too beautiful. Whoever it is playing piano the notes swirl around like a big ocean wave crashing into a colossal rock. That isn’t hate that’s exuberance. That’s transport. Get out of jail free card. Bass guitar like an ulcerated windmill eating a slice of wind. If you listen hard it will make you present to the voluptuousness of honey on a loaf of warm bread.